BRITISH readers love a happy ending to their novels and single out Mr Darcy getting together with Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice as their all-time favourite.

According to a survey published today for World Book Day, happy endings make a positive contribution to the nation’s quality of life. Whatever their age or gender, almost a quarter of people feel that a happy conclusion lifts their spirits and “puts them in a good mood” long after they have put down the book.

Pride and Prejudice, a clear winner, is followed by To Kill a Mockingbird, the classic tale by Harper Lee of a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. In a separate survey by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council of some 250 of the nation’s librarians, the American novel also tops the list of “must reads”.

The “happy endings” survey also asked which sad ending people would most like to change. The majority of women felt that Tess of the d’Urbervilles would benefit from a happy ending, while male respondents wished things had turned out better for Winston in George Orwell’s 1984.

Some 41 per cent of the 1,740 people questioned were “overwhelmingly in favour” of books with happy endings, compared with 2.2 per cent who preferred a sad one. Women were 13 per cent more likely than men to say that they wanted everything to end happily. Almost 20 per cent of men expressed a preference for books with ambiguous endings.

Young people were most likely to prefer books with sad endings — 8.6 per cent of under-16s. Those aged between 41 and 65, however, vigorously shun sad endings, with only 1.1 per cent of them preferring books that end this way.

The author Adele Parks said: “I think my readers deserve happy endings. There’s enough grimness to deal with without my adding to it.

“Yet if Anna and Vronsky or Scarlett and Rhett had lived happily ever after, we would have forgotten them.”

The survey was commissioned by the organisers of World Book Day and analysed by Education Direct.

The other survey asked librarians which book every adult should read before they die. After Lee’s classic, nominations included the Bible, Kama Sutra and Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The classics dominated. Favourites included Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, 1984, Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Pride and Prejudice. The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown, received only one nomination, despite its sales success.

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